David Christopher Roe, whose considerable variety of achievements across his career made him a Renaissance man of civil engineering, has died at 85.
Roe, P.E., L.S., F.ASCE, was a member of ASCE since 1961. He served as a draftsman in the U.S. Army in Germany from 1956 to 1959, then completed his mathematics degree in 1960. He was soon employed by Hubble, Roth & Clark in Bloomfield Hills, MI.
He earned his professional engineer’s license in 1965, and worked with Pate, Hern & Bogue in Southfield, MI, and Giffels Engineers in Detroit. He loved working in hydrology and site preparation, and surveyed a notable portion of southern Michigan with his two sons. By 1982, Roe became director of engineering at Hansen Lind Meyer in Iowa City, Iowa; Orlando, Florida; and Chicago, overseeing engineering projects on hospitals all over the United States.
Still later he was employed by Roy Weston Environmental Engineers and Mackie Consultants in Chicago. Through the years he was often a guest mathematics lecturer at Northwestern University in Illinois, and even presented an engineering discussion about the Bernoulli principle in Geneva, Switzerland.
On retiring in 2010 to Chicago, he reflected gladly that he had been able to work on so many types of projects, safely, economically, and fairly. He was known as an engineer’s engineer, and also excelled at being a father and grandfather.
